Sunday, April 20, 2008

RCOH D1started with the plenary presetation on Workplace Health Surveillance and The Role of Biological Monitoring by Prof. Dr. Malcolm Sim of Monash University, Australia. The RCOH was officially declared open by the Honourable New Minister of Human Resource, Dato' Dr. Subramaniam and then followed by the Keynote address entitled Occupational Health: Toward a healthy workplace by DG Ministry of Health, Tan Sri Datuk Dr Ismail Merican.There were 4 concurrence symposiums for the day:Symposium 1 on Occupational InjuriesSymposium 2 on Occupational Health in healthcare sectorsSymposium 3 on Occupational Health Services andSymposium 4 on Occupatinal Lung DiseasesThe entire sesssions were very informative and update. Amongst the speakers was Prof Dr David Koh of Singapore National University who talked on Emerging Occupational Medical issues- The nano examples. The Vascular Surgeon from Selayang Hospital, Mr V Pathmanathan touched on Occupational hand injuries.I met few participants from Sarawak at the conference and bought one book published by SOEM - Case Series in Occupational Medicine.Poster Presentations from local participants and Exhibition booth from SOCSO, DOSH and few companies make the conference more attractive. The conference was also attended by local experts like Prof. Dr KG Rampal of UKM, Dr Abu Hasan Samad of Exxon Mobile, Dr BJ Singh, Dr G Jayakumar of Petronas BASF, AP Dr M Retneswari of UM, Dr Mohd Nizam of SHELL Malaysia and Dr Jefferelli of SHELL Miri.

I attended the RCOH3 which started from 3rd April until 5th April at PJ Hilton attended by about 300 participants. There are 3 Pre-conference workshops on Chemical Health Risk Assessment (CHRA), Allergic Dermatoses and Aviation Medicine. It is quite difficult to choose which workshop to attend. Finally after much ponder, I opted to attend aviation medicine in view of the participation of our astronaut Dr Sheikh Muszhafar Shukor(SMS) and Dr Khalid Faiz as the speakers beside other speakers form Institute of Aviation Medicine, RMAF.

Dr Khalid spoke on the physiological effect of microgravity while Dr SMS spoke on his real experiencse in space, to be accurate at ISS (International Space Station).

This workshop covered the whole aspects of aviation medicine. As the aviation medicine experts said the main issue of aviation to our health is the effect of low pressure level the higher the altitude we fly. A lot of Gas laws such as Boyle and Dalton law were explained as a revision.

Microgravity which means small force of gravity in the space making all mass floating in the air despite of their weight due to no external force acts on the mass. Although the mass floats, there is still the issue of momentum which means every movement must be as slow as possible. The heavier the mass, the higher the impact to the mass if the momentum is bigger.

The two speakers (Dr Khalid and Astronaut Dr SMS) received over whelming questions from the participants. Among the questions asked was how does astronaut pass motion in space in view of microgravity effect? If you want to know the answer, you can email me....